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Tommy Swerdlow's avatar

Bella ran for mayor? you sure i thought just senator. I must've been really stoned because Bella Abzug was my mothers best friend and my mother was her consigliere on all matters with her campaigns-- they are going to Hunter college together. i grew up with bella in the kitchen-- yeah I guess I didn't know the Woodward I definitely remember that sushi bar. chin ya, right. Open till 2 AM. we went there with a pop dealing money.

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Eric Trules's avatar

When I got back to NYC in March-April, 1977, after modern dancing in Chicago for 7 years (another story unto itself since I was the kid least likely to become a modern dancer in Westbury Long Island!!!), I started "clowning" in midtown Manhattan on 6th Ave. as a daily "discipline" (since I was a professional dancer at that point), and it was at the exact moment that SEVENTEEN candidates were running for Mayor of NYC - one of which was definitely BELLA! All the candidates tried to draft me (GINO) into their campaigns, which pissed me off, so I decided to run myself. I became a minor celebrity and ended up founding "The Cumeezi Bozo Ensemble, "NYC's Resident Clown Troupe", which took me many places b4, I too, ended up in LA in 1982! MANY STORIES, man!!! And Chin Ya - it was open 'til 5 a.m.!!!

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Tommy Swerdlow's avatar

good, i think you just remember the late 70s

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Tommy Swerdlow's avatar

yingle's with shmeckles r us

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Eric Trules's avatar

Fuck, I was running for Mayor of New York City - as a CLOWN - in 1977! And dancing my ass off at Studio 54 a few years later, when I lived around the corner at 55th and Broadway at the Hotel Woodward. And just as desperate for girls! Great piece, Tommy.

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Tommy Swerdlow's avatar

against Mailer and Breslin? i don't remember the Woodward and but there was a place near there, a hotel that had an all night sushi bar in the lobby called Shin-ya

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Eric Trules's avatar

Against Bella Abzug and Herman Bedillo - election won by smilin' Ed Koch (Gino Cumeezi, my name as a clown, finished "5th out of 4 candidates"!).

You DO remember The Woodward - because yeah, "Chin-Ya" was the the all-night sushi bar/restuartant in the lobby, frequented by the likes of Art Garfunkel, Mick Jagger, and Liza/Halston. And the half-way house of ex-cons who lived on the 2nd floor - but only until their curfew at midnight. I lived on the 7th floor, and sometimes had 10 clowns ride down the rickety old wooden elevator into the lobby, where our biggest fans were Roni & Boni, the 300-pound twin switchboard operators and Rameesh, the Bangaladeshi desk clerk. Ahhhhhh, those were the days. $55/week, until I moved out to go to Europe in 1979 with my clown company!

https://erictrules.com/the-hotel-woodward-nyc-back-in-the-day-episode-38/

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Michael Peyser's avatar

"Every kiss was a question and every answer was good. It was all real, real good"

yes yes yes indeede o d yes

bless you T for knowing what was there

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Tommy Swerdlow's avatar

Pye, you are a scoundrel and always have been, and you were there for there for whole endeavor

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Susan Hayden's avatar

I love this one.

xSH

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Urariano Mota's avatar

I really enjoyed it!

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Thais's avatar

"I was proud and fifteen and too foolish to know that if I just looked her in the eye and said “that was it, you’re it, you’re the first, I may never be whole, but I’m surely more whole than I’ve ever been before,” if I could have just told her that, she probably would have loved me even more." - We steal from ourselves so many great opportunities to be loved because we were so effective at being fools, but then we grow =)

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Tommy Swerdlow's avatar

we do grow...i've seen it

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Feldsher's avatar

Boychiks with dicks. X

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